Current and prior art photo product creation applications for user created photo products such as photo books, greeting cards, collages, and the like do not handle text well. The addition and positioning of text within image based products is cumbersome and these procedures are focused on technology or product elements, not on the user experience. Many applications treat text as a layer that exists on a picture layer or on the background layer of a digital image product. Users typically are provided with different applications that treat some layer implementations in a unique manner such as a linked annotation where text is placed adjacent to an image, where users can add text to a picture, and add text to a page such as with caption. Other applications simply provide templates that illustrate where text can be placed, either on an image or adjacent to it. More sophisticated applications will adapt the text font size if the number of text characters exceeds the allocated space for text.
With imaging products, if the page is a collage background, one of the four surfaces of a folded card, or a photo book page, whereby the text creation method defines the link and associated behavior of the text. Each different condition including a consumer provided image, a graphic element such as a border or overlay, or a finished product feature such as a fold, seam, or cut line would provide a different real time user interface process, feedback indication, and text placement feature, and text style/color/configuration feature. Additionally, the actual content of the image such as faces, objects, pets, animals, vehicles, and the like are automatically identified via image analysis or provided metadata and also are used to modify the text placement user interface and text placement option relative to the proximity of the identified image content. This technique can also be applied to graphic elements (such as clip art) and extracted photographic objects.